§2 [5-9]
more intimately and immediately. The farmer’s experience proceeds quite differently into the whole and comes quite differently out of the whole than the agitated squirming of the city dweller, who clings only to the “telephone and radio.” The smallest and narrowest sphere of known beings has nevertheless its expansion into the whole; even narrowness is always still an expanse—an expansion into the whole. On the other hand, the widest variety is largely lacking in expanse, so much so that it—as mere scatterings and their running on and on—never even amounts to a narrowness.
That which is is always less than all beings and is also not the whole of beings purely and simply encompassed and intuited. It is rather, as we say, beings as a whole—in that way indeed more, essentially more than each and every summation, even the greatest possible.
τὰ ὄντα—that which is—means beings as a whole. From this is to be distinguished all beings as well as the whole of beings. Yet let us not fool ourselves. We do not have a fully clear understanding of what is meant here. Nevertheless, something is indicated for which we have a quite sure feeling. This “as a whole” is so ungraspable in an inceptual way precisely because it is constantly what is closest and most familiar to us: we always skip over it. Indeed, even further, for the most part we unwittingly misinterpret it and render it unrecognizable. In order to experience that which is, i.e., beings as a whole, we do not need to undertake gymnastically any sort of mysterious contortion of thought and representation. Quite to the contrary, we only need to loosen somewhat our everyday shackling to what is currently obtrusive and incidental—and already we will have explicitly experienced what is astonishing in experience. | To be sure, only quite roughly, but this “roughly,” this “as a whole,” is in itself something completely determinate and essential, even if we are now still far removed from comprehending it.
Let this be a provisional elucidation of what Anaximandros is speaking about. We will now ask: 2) What does he actually say about it, about “beings”? “Whence (that out of which) beings step forth—precisely into this also their receding happens according to necessity.”
b) Beings in γένεσις καὶ φθορά
a) Stepping forth and receding pertain to beings. α) γένεσις in general β) ἠ γένεσις ἡ φθορά [the stepping-forth the receding]. γένεσις and φθορά are readily taken as “coming to be and passing away,” and so in short: alteration, becoming other, or in general: becoming. That is very understandable and is not artificially formulated. For us, however, the question is whether the ready translation does not unwittingly introduce